The book is over 1,100 pages in modern editions and gives an account of Balkan history and ethnography during West's six-week trip to Yugoslavia in 1937. West's objective was "to show the past side by side with the present it created".[1] Publication of the book coincided with the NaziInvasion of Yugoslavia, and West added a foreword highly praising the Yugoslavs for their brave defiance against Germany. The book's epigraph reads: "To my friends in Yugoslavia, who are now all dead or enslaved".[2]

The character of "Constantine" is supposedly based on Stanislav Vinaver. Anica Savić Rebac, under the name of Milica, appears not only as a new friend, but also as the intellectual guide who eventually reveals to Rebecca West the rituals which would lead the author to the clue metaphor of her vision of the Balkans.[3]